Review From The House

Vancouver theatre

Vancouver, BC: I read a lot and my literary addiction is to thrillers so I anticipated with spine-tingling enthusiasm, the staging of The Hunger Room, a new play by local playwright and actor, Scott Button. This turned out to be an excellent event to end my 6 month hiatus from theatre reviewing and recharge my enthusiasm for seeing works by the many small independent theatre companies that have sprung up in the Vancouver scene.

Vancouver, BC: I just spent a delightful couple of hours with a friend at the Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island watching the students of the Arts Umbrella Musical Theatre Troupe perform The Drowsy Chaperone. Teens from 13 to 19 enrolled in the year-long Intensive and Pre-Professional Musical Theatre programs get to showcase their work as in the current 2016 Expressions Festival. This Festival also features work by the Theatre Troupes of various ages.

Vancouver, BC: Blackbird Theatre company celebrates its 10th anniversary of producing classical theatre with a sparkling production of The Rivals. From their first production, Schiller's Mary Stuart starring Gabrielle Rose (tonight AKA Mrs. Malaprop), their shows have always maintained a high professional standard with excellent performances and strong technical values and this production continues in that tradition.

Vancouver, BC: Less than a year after my husband succumbed to cancer, I saw "Wit", in which Seana Mckenna played Dr. Vivian Bearing, a solitary, career-driven English Professor, undergoing treatment for terminal ovarian cancer. Despite the brittle humour and sardonic wit which sustained the self-contained Dr. Bearing through several courses of aggressive chemotherapy, the sense of absolute solitariness in which each of us, like her, will ultimately face death, permeated the play; and I remember that I cried silently throughout the play.

Vancouver, BC: Before I say just how much I liked this fast paced, high energy, steampunk version of The Comedy of Errors, I should declare that I had the unusual pleasure of vicariously experiencing the evolution of this production as my daughter, Amanda, enjoyed the privilege of being Apprentice Director to the ingeniously creative director, Scott Bellis.

Vancouver BC: On a miserably cold, rainy night we took the Skytrain from downtown Vancouver out to Douglas College in New Westminster. We went to see a student production of Charles Mee's adaption of Euripides' The Women of Troy. I was overjoyed to experience a production that was so much a visual and auditory delight that it made our sodden trek out to New Westminster more than worthwhile.

Tucked away on the corner of Venables Street and Victorian Drive, a block east of buzzing Commercial Drive, the creaky old Vancouver East Cultural Theatre had a quaint charm for theatre lovers despite its uncomfortable seats and awkwardly located washrooms. Originally an old abandoned church that was developed into a theatre space some thirty-seven years ago, the facility suffered from structural and technical limitations and uncomfortable working conditions for casts and crews and has now been extensively renovated.

Vancouver, BC: As a computer-nerd/technophile of long-standing I was intrigued by the concept of taking the multi-player video game concept into the theatre and eagerly anticipated the experience of my personal avatar interacting with some 200 other avatars to conjure up a new society in BestLand.

Vancouver, BC: Start with a script written by one of Canada's iconic playwright/actors and directed by the playwright himself. Feature two compelling powerful female actors with hugely synergistic on-stage chemistry in a small theatre setting where every nuance of their performance can be seen. And focus on the ebb and flow of an intimate relationship between these two women, from casual meeting, to sexual encounter, touching on friendship, love, attraction, trust and mistrust. My expectations were high - I was expecting truly to be blown away by this play. But I confess I just did not get it.

You take a brilliantly written script that turns the Judas Iscariot story inside out, set it in a court room, lace it with profanity, people it with some of the best actors in town, and you have a riveting evening of theatre.

Vancouver, BC: The Arts Club opened its 46th season with a riotously funny evening of two plays by writers who would not at first come to my mind as writers of comedy. Peter Shaffer after all, is probably best known for Equus - a intensely disturbing psychological drama. And I have never really found the Chekhov plays that I have seen or read to be exactly a bundle of laughs.

Vancouver, BC: Almost exactly a year ago I watched a staged reading of an early version of Via Beatrice at the Playwrights Theatre Centre. At the time I commented on my Works in Progress page commentary that " It is always a privilege to get a peek into the creation of a new work, and then, hopefully, to see a full production of the finished version." And it really was exciting to see the polished production that this work has become in a year.

Vancouver,BC: One would have to have a heart of steel, or maybe no heart at all, not to adore feisty little orphan Annie and her unshaken belief that her parents will return to take her away from Miss Hannigan and the orphanage. The story of Annie and Daddy Warbucks, however implausible (it was based on a comic strip after all) taps into the dream of any lonely, lost or abused child; namely that someone big and strong and loving will come to rescue them. And then as well as its optimism and emotional appeal, the musical is jam-packed with well known songs that stay in your head, long after the curtain falls. Annie is great family entertainment.

Vancouver's Bard on the Beach Company has undertaken as a "noble goal" to stage Shakespeare's entire dramatic canon by the 25th anniversary of the company, five years hence. As part of this ambitious objective, Bard will be presenting a cycle of Shakespeare's History Plays through the 2009 to 2011 seasons as discussed in my How They See It Chat with Bard Artistic Director, Christopher Gaze.This year's staging of Richard II starts this series of plays. While most people have some familiarity with the more frequently produced story of Shakespeare's twisted, malevolent, murdering Richard III, I suspect that, like I until recently, they don't know too much about where Richard II fits into the whole English kings / Wars of the Roses saga.

Vancouver, BC: All's Well that Ends Well is all about Helena, a young woman, in love with a man who is above her social class and can't see beyond her lower status to appreciate her many virtues. With a plot that incorporates common theatrical devices of disguised identities, token rings, and a buffoonish braggart who gets his come-uppance, Lois Anderson's vibrant portrayal of the intelligent, resourceful, though lovesick Helena provides the tensile strength that holds the play together. With every emotion, from adoration to pain, expressed with subtlety through eyes and voice, she brings an innate dignity to Helena that makes it clear why she is adored by everyone except the foolish Bertram.

Beginning with this summer's production of Richard II, opening Saturday, July 11 2009, Bard on the Beach will present the 8 plays of Shakespeare's history cycle that deal with the political intrigues and civil wars that occurred as the various descendants of Edward III fought to take and hold the crown of England. Over the next two seasons, we will be able to follow the story of the convoluted passage of the crown of England back and forth between the houses of York and Lancaster through seven different kings (Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III, Henry VII). The Douglas Campbell Studio Theatre will be the setting for the 2010 production of Falstaff (a conflation of Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2) and Henry V. In 2011, we will see The War of The Roses (a conflation of the three parts of Henry VI) and Richard III.

Vancouver, BC: Matthew (Jeremy Crittenden), Mark (David Hurwitz), Luke (Jak Barradell), Juan (Vincent Tong) and Abraham (Geoff Stevens) are the Altar Boyz, members of a boy band who are playing the final concert of their "Raise the Praise" tour - at the Granville Island Stage - and, according to their impressive digital electronic device, the Soul-Sensor DX-12, they have several hundred heavily burdened souls in the audience to save, by the end of the concert. That's the premise of the show. A thin story-line to be sure, but that is all that is needed to thread twelve high-energy song and dance routines into a swinging, toe-tapping non-stop 90 minutes of pure entertainment.

Last night I made my way gingerly along a dusty, construction-damaged Granville Street, to the Commodore Ballroom where Vancouver's theatre community gathered to celebrate another year of amazing theatre. It is always interesting to see how the nominations and the final award winners stack up against what I thought during the year of play-going, and what details I can remember of the many productions. As well, the productions nominated are only a portion of the many shows staged here - Vancouver has a great theatre scene, and often I find that there are more things available to see than hours to see them in.

Vancouver, BC: It's probably the quarter of a decade that I spent at the BC Childen's and Women's Hospitals that had me wondering what sort of whacky comedy the Bard could have constructed in today's obstetrical environment where twin births are old hat compared to the birth of sextuplets, septuplets or even octuplets! Imagine the complications of mistaken identity that could ensue with sextuplets farmed out at birth - and they don't even have to be identical for their closest friends and lovers to be confused. Think of it. Folks couldn't even distinguish Viola from her twin brother Sebastian in Twelfth Night!

Vancouver,BC: Of Shakespeare's great tragedies. Othello ranks as number one in my list of faves, just ahead of King Lear. I think it is for me that the play is about an epic battle between two larger than life characters - Iago, arguably Shakespeare's greatest villain, and Othello, the archetype "hero with a fatal flaw." The immense dramatic irony is that Othello, the great warrior General , doesn't even know he is involved in this battle, yet the audience knows that bit by bit he is losing the most important war of his life. As Harold Bloom puts it, it is Othello's tragedy but it is Iago's play. Iago, the master manipulator pulls strings like a puppeteer, weaving a web of deceit that ensnares everyone - including ultimately, himself.

Vancouver, BC: This production of Palace of the End is a simply stunning theatrical experience. Thompson has crafted three powerful monologues based on three real people each with a connection to contemporary Iraq and all three monologues are superbly performed. Although based on news stories and research, as Thompson remarks in the playwright's notes - "the persona ...of each speaker has been created by me." And of course the words they speak spring from her imagination. Yet for me the authentic voices of these three characters ring out in a compelling and utterly believable way.

Vancouver, BC: It is 1990 and Jon (Brandyn Eddy) is a promising young composer living in Manhattan. Jon is about to turn thirty and he is agonizing about his career in music and theatre, and fretting that he is over the hill. This premise for the show would ordinarily be a trifle irritating to me. I left 30 behind some years ago (alright, many years ago) yet I still feel that I am on the way up to the summit of a career hill. Albeit a different hill from the one I was climbing at 30. No existential angst is allowed in my mind. To safeguard myself against the upcoming angst, I booked for dinner at DB Bistro Moderne on Broadway: Our Broadway of course!

Vancouver, BC: I was really happy to be able to catch the closing night performance of Toronto Mississippi, the day after I returned after three weeks away from Vancouver. The play itself is one that I had often heard discussed but had never read nor seen performed and I expected that Dean Paul Gibson would draw strong performances from the cast of Colleen Wheeler (Maddie), Meg Roe (Jhana), Bill MacDonald (King) and Alessandro Juliani (Bill).

Vancouver, BC: Last year’s Bard production of Taming of the Shrew was one of my all-time Bard on the Beach favorites garnering a rave in my Rants, Raves and Reviews column, but David Mackay’s production of Twelfth Night has displaced Shrew from number one on my BOTB hit parade. And this, despite the fact that in more than a decade of seeing performances in Vanier Park, I have never been as miserably cold as on Thursday’s opening night.

After weeks away in the dry heat of California and then the cooler, thin-air mountains of Colorado, I am back in the saddle, or rather, the theatre seat again, for the remount opening night of Cookin' at the Cookery. And what a ride it was tonight. Under the direction of Bill Sample (keyboard), musicians Graham Boyle (percussion), David Sinclair (Guitar) and Rene Worst (Bass) produced swinging rhythms that I swear called out to me "get dancing, girl". But being a well trained theatre patron, I kept my hands and feet from tapping out the beat and my mouth from belting out the words. It was a struggle. But I loved the show.

Vancouver, BC: Take two seemingly unrelated questions - what moral values lead to destructive human relationships? And what aesthetic values define art? - combine through the unforgiving pen of playwright/ director, Neil Labute, and you get the edgy disturbing play, The Shape of Things, that previewed last night at the Waterfront Theatre, on Granville Island.

Vancouver, BC: Among my CD collection of Broadway musicals, one of my favorites is the original London cast recording of "Company". However I had never seen "Company" performed so it was with great anticipation that I headed off to the Stanley for opening night of the show. And the production lived up to my expectations thanks to a terrific, high energy cast, who sang Sondheim's clever, acerbic lyrics so clearly that I could hear and savour every word. Well, almost every word except for the thousand word a minute "Getting Married Today" brilliantly performed by Tracy Neff.